Two brothers combine their backgrounds in biology, medicine, business and law to create an innovative biomedical startup.

As boys, Arman MS ’04, MBA ’10 and Afshin Nadershahi MD ’09 would go on adventures in the woods behind their suburban St. Louis home. “We’d explore all day. We’d build forts,” says Arman, the elder by two years. “Sometimes we’d form expeditions and bring along a motley crew of kids.”

Today, the Nadershahi brothers scout a different frontier as entrepreneurs: a tangled thicket of patent filings, product prototyping and the thorny Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process.

Their medical device startup, Proa Medical, spun out of USC’s Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering high-tech accelerator. The name Proa is Spanish for the prow of a ship and was chosen for the symbolism of cutting through the open seas. Based in Redondo Beach, California, the company brings physician-invented gadgets to market. Their first two products—the Brella vaginal retractor and the Brella-Spec vaginal speculum—received FDA approval in 2014 and are in limited trials in hospitals.

Every day, 360,000 babies come into the world, making child delivery one of the globe’s highest-volume procedures. It turns out that the health care workers delivering these babies would benefit from sterile gynecological devices they could use once and discard.

In Western hospitals, Arman explains, the time it takes to set up, sterilize and replace reusable devices would be far better spent on patient care. And in developing countries, where women routinely give birth in unsterile environments, disposable gynecological devices could greatly reduce the risk of infections.

Eleven more Proa devices are already in the pipeline, half of them geared toward women’s health.

Looking back, Proa seems like the Nadershahi brothers’ destiny. For starters, medicine runs in their family: Their Iranian-born father is a retired physician, and an older brother has a medical practice in Seattle. (A fourth brother works in information technology.)

Arman and Afshin earned master’s degrees in biology at the University of Minnesota before Arman got his law degree there and headed to California to work as a biotech patent lawyer. That’s when Arman had his epiphany. Doctors would approach him with terrific ideas for new devices, but their ideas invariably went nowhere because “physicians are really busy doing their full-time job treating patients,” Arman says. “I thought, There’s obviously a need here.”

So Arman ditched his prestigious law firm and went back to school, earning his master’s degree in regulatory science from the USC School of Pharmacy. Soon he was working at the Alfred Mann Institute (AMI), combining his regulatory and legal knowledge to move biotech innovations to market.

Meanwhile, Afshin had followed Arman to USC, enrolling at the Keck School of Medicine and interning at AMI, where he too was swept up in research and development.

Because of the brothers’ AMI connection, some of their company’s revenues will return to AMI, where Arman serves as senior director for corporate intellectual property counsel.

At Proa, the brothers assembled a team that shepherds devices through product development and complex approval processes. For the Brella devices, they needed dozens of studies just to establish the biocompatibility of different plastics and the safety of their lighting. They even tested packaging to measure shelf life and shipping durability.

“It’s almost an extension of what we did as kids,” Arman says. “Playing, exploring, building stuff, getting a team together, seeing what happens, going into uncharted territory.”

DIANE KRIEGER

PHOTO CREDIT: GUS RUELAS

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Masako Miura ’36, MD ’41tag:alumni.usc.edu,2015://101.809932015-03-18T23:44:01Z2015-03-19T17:50:40ZWhen Masako Miura '36, MD '41 earned her medical degree, she received a certificate congratulating "him" on "his" accomplishment. Since she was one of only two women getting a medical degree that year, she shrugged it off as an honest mistake.Timothy O'Neill KnightPioneering Physician

Masako Miura ’36, MD ’41 was one of two women in the graduating class of 1941 at USC’s medical school.

When Masako Kusayanagi Miura graduated in 1941 from what was then called the USC School of Medicine, the certificate she received congratulated “him” on “his” accomplishment. Since she was one of only two women getting a medical degree alongside 45 men, she brushed it off as an honest mistake.

Miura, who celebrated her 100th birthday on June 29, might be the oldest living alumna of what’s now known as the Keck School of Medicine of USC—and possibly its most humble.

“I guess I got in because I got pretty good grades,” says Miura, who also was an undergraduate at USC. “Pretty good grades” is her modest way of saying she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in chemistry in 1936.

Medicine appealed to her desire to help people in distress. At the time, it was far more common for health-minded women to attend nursing school, but being a physician appealed to Miura because she likes being in charge. “It seemed to me the doctors had more say-so, and that was what I wanted,” she says.

These days Miura looks back fondly on medical school. Her studies were challenging but interesting and she fit in well in the male-dominated classrooms. “I made a lot of friends,” she says.

A far bigger personal and professional challenge came soon after she graduated from medical school. She had barely started her residency at Los Angeles County General (now known as LAC+USC Medical Center) when the United States entered World War II after Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor. She and her then-husband, James Goto, a fellow USC medical school graduate she met while both were students, were sent to an internment camp for Japanese-Americans.

They ran the hospital at Manzanar, a camp in California’s Owens Valley, with five other doctors, all Japanese-American internees. More than 10,000 people were crowded into the camp’s barracks. “We were always working,” Miura remembers.

The physicians dealt with every kind of illness and injury, from simple colds to the gunshot wounds many of internees suffered during Manzanar’s riots. For what she says was the most difficult assignment of her career, she and the other doctors were paid $19 a month.

Miura and Goto were transferred to a camp in Topaz, Utah, in 1943. At the close of the war, they returned to Los Angeles to run a medical practice in Little Tokyo.

“They let people pay them however they could—boxes of celery or a bag of peaches,” recalls Miura’s daughter, Denise Kodani ’60, PharmD ’67. Most of their patients also were Japanese-Americans just released from internment.

After many years in private practice in general medicine, Miura decided to specialize in dermatology. She continued working almost until her 80th birthday. Kodani adds that Miura has never boasted about her professional achievements, but she has always been proud of her affiliation with USC. In part because of her mother’s prodding, Kodani also attended USC, first as an undergraduate and then again for pharmacy school.

Kodani says one of her mother’s favorite rituals is making the pilgrimage from her home in Watsonville, California, to USC for Half Century Trojans functions at least once a year.

Stepping onto campus again, more than eight decades since she did so for the first time as a freshman, remains a thrill for Miura, and she still thrusts her fingers skyward in a victory salute every time she hears the first note of “Fight On.”

“She loves being a Trojan,” Kodani says, “and even though she’s humble about it, she loves being a doctor.”

HOPE HAMASHIGE

PHOTO CREDIT:COURTESY OF MASAK0 MIURA

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Walid Abdul-Wahab ’13tag:alumni.usc.edu,2015://101.809922015-03-18T23:13:18Z2015-03-19T17:00:55ZWalid Abdul-Wahab '13 is not Amish, but the 22-year-old Marshall grad has close ties to the Plain community through his company, Desert Farms, which distributes camel's milk from Amish and Mennonite family farms in the American heartland.Timothy O'Neill KnightGot Camel’s Milk?

An enterprising USC Marshall alum finds a unique niche at the intersection of food, health and Amish farming.

Let’s state for the record that Walid Abdul-Wahab ’13 is not Amish. His company publicity photo shows him in a field sporting Amish-appropriate attire (a straw hat, suspenders and a mustache-less beard), but it’s simply a reflection of his close ties to the Plain community: The Middle Eastern-originated beverage he markets comes from Amish and Mennonite family farms scattered across the American heartland.

Asked if his beard is a marketing gimmick, the 22-year-old Abdul-Wahab smiles sheepishly: “No, no. I’ve always had that. I’m a Muslim.”

Raised in Saudi Arabia, the USC-educated entrepreneur is founder of Desert Farms, America’s first retail distributor of camel’s milk. Sold by roadside camel herders in the Middle East, camel’s milk is gaining traction in America among health-conscious consumers looking for cow’s milk alternative. The Wall Street Journal even declared camel’s milk the new “it” drink.

Low in fat, camel’s milk tastes similar to cow’s milk, with a saltier finish. An Indian research center has linked it to improved wound healing and healthier response to blood sugar in patients with diabetes. Though it’s scientifically unproven, some believe it might help people with neurological disorders—which explains why about 90 percent of Desert Farms’ customers are the parents of children with autism.

“It keeps me going all day,” adds Abdul-Wahab, who downs a 16-ounce bottle every morning. “I don’t know how to explain it. But when a Bedouin goes into the desert, he sustains himself purely on camel milk.”

The idea for Desert Farms sprouted from Abdul-Wahab’s marketing class at USC Marshall School of Business and was refined in his financial entrepreneurship course. His senior year, it earned him the school’s prestigious Marcia Israel Award for entrepreneurship. The USC Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies helped launch the fledgling business through its AIM accelerator program last summer, providing downtown office space and alumni mentoring.

Less than a year since launching, Abdul-Wahab ships about 6,000 bottles a week milked from Amish-owned camels in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri to people and retailers around the country. In California, Desert Farms products sit alongside bottles of raw juices and coconut water in more than 100 retail locations including Whole Foods, Lassens and Rainbow Groceries.

Sold as milk or kefir, raw or gently pasteurized, fresh or frozen, Desert Farms’ products run $16 to $18 a pint. Sales are expected to reach $200,000 by year’s end, and the company is growing. Abdul-Wahab, who favors paid interns, many of them USC students, hopes to have 10 staffers on board soon.

Desert Farms’ biggest shareholder is the founder’s father, a successful steel mill owner in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. What does Dad think of his entrepreneurial son?

“He always makes fun of me,” says the younger Abdul-Wahab, the second of five children. “He says, ‘I sent you to USC to study finance, and now you’re a farmer!’ But when I was featured on the Wall Street Journal website, he was very happy.”

Non-perishable and long shelf-life products are an important hedge against the vicissitudes of camel milk production. Last fall, Abdul-Wahab introduced a line of camel-milk soaps. Powdered camel milk, ice cream and chocolates are coming soon, he says.

As for the future, Abdul-Wahab is inspired by Dubai, where camel products run the gamut from cream to cheese. They even have a camel-milk signature coffee, he says: “They call it camel-ccino.”

DIANE KRIEGER

PHOTO CREDIT: EMIL KARA

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Robert Kronfli '11tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.806412014-12-08T23:53:12Z2014-12-09T00:15:19ZBuzz-worthy dining venues with waiting lists for reservations are no big thing in Los Angeles. But back in 2009, one that hit the scene was run out of the North University Park apartment of two USC sophomores, Robert Kronfli ’11 and Alex Chang ’11.Timothy O'Neill KnightServing Up Success

A restaurateur on the rise started with an underground supper club run out of a USC student apartment.

Buzz-worthy dining venues with waiting lists for reservations are no big thing in Los Angeles. But back in 2009, one that hit the scene wasn’t located in a trendy foodie neighborhood. It was run out of the North University Park apartment of two USC sophomores, Robert Kronfli ’11 and Alex Chang ’11. Over the next two years, what started as a casual Thursday night dinner among friends became an underground phenomenon. It would spur a documentary film and forever change their lives.

The illicit supper club was called Paladar, the Cuban term referring to a restaurant run out of a private home. While Kronfli, a music major, took on the role of restaurateur, Chang, a kinesthesiology major, served up three-course prix fixe dinners that ranged from Spanish-inspired cuisine to New American.

By the end of Kronfli’s and Chang’s senior year, the Thursday night dinners had expanded to Tuesday through Saturday with up to 70 diners per night and a documentary in the works by USC film student Gil Freston ’12.

Kronfli, who was juggling schoolwork and internships, began to consider another career path. “When Paladar began taking up so much of my time, energy and mental focus, my life just naturally went down that road and I decided to go with it,” Kronfli remembers.

After graduating, Chang headed to Europe to hone his cooking skills. Kronfli took his own next logical step: He went into business with his brother Daniel ’05, the founder of Bacaro LA restaurant.

Now a full-time restaurateur, Kronfli’s days are anything but predictable. “During the day, I could be doing accounting and financial forecasting, marketing and branding; at night, serving customers or washing dishes.” The pace of the business is a perfect fit. “We don’t like complacency,” he says. “We’re always looking toward the next project, how we can keep growing and stay busy.”

And busy they are. Beyond expanding Bacaro LA, the Kronflis and their business partner, Lior Hillel, opened Nature’s Brew, a cafe next door. Demand for their sauces led to the opening of Kronfli Brothers Inc., a retail foods bottling company. In August, the brothers and Hillel stepped outside their USC neighborhood comfort zone, opening Bacari PDR in the community of Playa Del Rey.

Each new endeavor has met with success in an often-cruel industry. The Kronflis’ approach? Extreme attention to detail. “My OCD, in this regard, really ensures that every detail—from food, service, design and cleanliness—is executed properly,” Kronfli says. “Obviously, hard work and a strong vision also need to work side by side with effective business and marketing strategies.”

And many of their staff members are USC students or alumni, by design. “This investment isn’t only financial but also an emotional one,” he says. “We treat our team members as if they’re part of our extended family. We couldn’t accomplish the goals we‘ve set in place without a hardworking team that shares our passion.”

The brothers and Hillel now dream of dramatically growing their restaurants and product line. But in the midst of so many projects, Kronfli won’t forget his roots as a student at USC. Freston’s documentary, Paladar, which captured the scrappy, experimental underground club that started it all, showed at the Tribeca Film Festival and Downtown Film Festival-Los Angeles in 2013 and is now available on iTunes and Amazon.com. Watch the Paladar trailer at bit.ly/USCPaladar.

BEKAH WRIGHT

PHOTO CREDIT: CAROLINE ASHKAR

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Wilma Williams Pinder ’62 tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.806392014-12-08T21:41:59Z2014-12-08T23:02:13ZDespite what you might see on TV courtroom dramas, being a good litigator is not about being aggressive, flashy or devious. “To make it work, you must build a story around your facts,” says Wilma Williams Pinder ’62, with the conviction of a seasoned lawyer.Timothy O'Neill Knight

Life and Times of a Litigator

Longtime L.A. attorney remains a “perpetual cheerleader” for USC.

Despite what you might see on TV courtroom dramas, being a good litigator is not about being aggressive, flashy or devious. “To make it work, you must build a story around your facts,” says Wilma Williams Pinder ’62, with the conviction of a seasoned lawyer.

For 30 years, Pinder represented the city of Los Angeles and rose to the position of assistant city attorney before she retired in 2008. She knows the courtroom well. She also knows about the importance of hard work and persistence, both in the legal world and beyond it.

The older of two sisters, Pinder was only three-years-old when her family moved from Shreveport, Louisiana, to L.A. in search of better opportunities. She’s thankful for her parents’ can-do spirit. “They raised us to be decent, caring people and to have no expectations of anyone except ourselves,” she says. Pinder’s mother, a realtor and the family’s main breadwinner, used to tell her, “You’re going to college, and I am going to pay for it.” And she did.

A graduate of Dorsey High School, Pinder attended what was then called Pepperdine College (at that time, located a few miles south of USC in South L.A.), then transferred to USC her junior year. In an undergraduate psychology class, she met the young man who would become her husband: Frank E. Pinder III ’63. “He was just a kid, like I was,” she recalls. “But we shared the same values, and he ended up being such a joy.”

Besides common values, they shared a curiosity and caring about people. Wilma Pinder went on to earn a master’s degree in psychology at Howard University, where Frank earned his medical degree, later specializing in psychiatry. (Currently semi-retired, he still works part time as an assistant clinical professor for the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center’s Psychiatric Inpatient Service.) After stints teaching psychology in the 1970s, Wilma Pinder studied law at UCLA and then joined the city of Los Angeles’ legal team.

Known during her career for being a consummate attorney with an unrelenting style, Pinder brings that same passion to volunteering. A self-described “perpetual cheerleader for USC,” she helped organize her class’s 50th reunion as well as the USC Women’s Conference in 2012. She also serves on the board of the Half Century Trojans alumni group. “You can come home again,” she says.

Besides organizing events and activities, Pinder enjoys being swept up in the spirit of the university. “It’s an anchor in L.A.,” she says, leaning back in an armchair in the President’s Lounge at Widney Alumni House. “And it has made an imprint on the world, because there are so many international students here.”

It’s not surprising that she mentions USC’s international flavor. The Pinders have traveled far and wide throughout America, Africa, Europe and Asia, taking their Trojan spirit with them. A picture that she recently found in her home in the Mid-Wilshire area shows her and Frank in 1987, posing in front of the Great Wall of China. All smiles, they’re both raising two fingers to the sky: V for Victory.

CHRISTINA SCHWEIGHOFER

PHOTO CREDIT: GUS RUELAS

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Nate Kaplan MPP ’11 tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.806382014-12-08T21:27:36Z2014-12-09T00:27:14ZSeeking an alternative to text-heavy voter guides, Nate Kaplan came up with the idea to create short, nonpartisan video clips to explain ballot measures. He made a trial-run series of black-and-white, low-budget videos that have evolved into SeePolitical.com.Timothy O'Neill Knight

Winning Proposition

It was a call in autumn 2008 from the Los Angeles Times that gave Nate Kaplan MPP ’11 pause. Kaplan was the communication director for then-Los Angeles Councilmember Bill Rosendahl, and the newspaper wanted to know: How would Rosendahl be voting on the November ballot?

“I’m hammering through the boring, gray voter guide we’ve all come to know and resent, and I’m thinking this is pretty difficult—and I have a background in policy,” Kaplan remembers.

A follow-up conversation with Rosendahl put things in perspective. It was the year of Proposition 8, the proposed ban on same-sex marriage—and Rosendahl is openly gay, so the issue was particularly important to him, Kaplan says. “He was convinced he had to vote yes. We kept assuring him, ‘You’ve got to vote no if you support same-sex marriage.’”

The experience clicked for Kaplan. “I thought, there has to be a better way to communicate this information,” he says. “Text-heavy voter guides don’t cut it.” Kaplan came up with an idea to create short, nonpartisan video clips that could clearly explain ballot measures.

Kaplan headed to USC Price School of Public Policy to earn his Master in Public Policy degree while still working with the LA City Council and on his video project. Despite having no background in video production, directing or screenwriting, he made a trial-run series of black-and-white, low-budget videos. It evolved into what’s now SeePolitical.com.

In 2012, an invitation to speak at Otis College of Art and Design proved integral for the fledgling site.

Chip Houghton, co-owner of the Emmy Award-winning animation studio Imaginary Forces, approached Kaplan at the event about partnering on the project. “They’ve been a godsend,” Kaplan says of Imaginary Forces. “They’re incredibly talented at telling a story in 30 seconds to two minutes.” Two minutes was key for SeePolitical—it’s the magic number affixed to voters’ attention spans.

SeePolitical had its soft launch before last June’s election and then refocused on November’s vote. Undergrads from USC Dornsife’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics perform the ballot research. Says Kaplan: “We really benefited from their youthful energy and suggestions of how to communicate information.” Dan Schnur, director of the Unruh Institute, also serves on SeePolitical’s board of directors.

For Kaplan, SeePolitical’s agenda is simple: clarity. Kaplan envisions the site as a “platform for all things election and politics, and to empower voters with knowledge, helping them make decisions for themselves.”

Several powerhouses have joined SeePolitical’s cause, including the League of Women Voters, Yelp and Time Warner Cable. Talks are in progress with Univision and Telemundo to potentially offer SeePolitical videos for Spanish-speaking voters. “We want to expand to other states, and drill down to local city and county issues as well,” Kaplan says.

As SeePolitical gains momentum, Kaplan is asked the inevitable question: Would he consider running for office? After all, the Massachusetts native became the youngest candidate in his district’s history to win a primary when he ran for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 2006. His response is that of a true politician: “I’ll always keep that option on the table, but my dream is for SeePolitical to become a national success and to serve as its executive director for a very long time.”

In honor of her work in the community, Priscilla Partridge de Garcia ’63, MS ’67, EdD ’72 lit the Olympic torch in Santa Barbara, California, as part of its journey to the 1996 Atlanta Games. Accompanied by police officers, she high-fived cheering bystanders as she ran along the designated route. It wasn’t until later that she learned some observers were less supportive. “I’d received 17 death threats,” she says. “Turns out, the runner who lights the torch is always a target.” She subsequently discovered that “beyond the police that I knew of running beside me, there were also CIA members all around and snipers covering me from the trees.”

She might not have known about the threat to her life, but she does understand the impact of fear. Her life’s mission is to help people who’ve grappled with violence and loss.

A clinical psychologist in private practice,Priscilla Partridge de Garcia works with clients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She also studies mind-body connections in the aging brain, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Through her one-on-one work with patients in Camarillo, California, she helps heal unseen wounds that lie deep in the psyche, helping her patients move past trauma.

She entered the field in 1975 as a young psychologist at Oxnard College’s Re-Entry Program. She transitioned people experiencing PTSD into college courses, then careers. The students Partridge de Garcia encountered ran the gamut from domestic abuse victims to Vietnam War veterans. “I realized they had a lot of blocks from the past,” she recalls. “The goal was to help remove disabling patterns. Sometimes talk therapy alone just doesn’t do that. For someone to really get well, working on all levels—emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual—has to come into play.”

Beyond traditional therapy, Partridge de Garcia’s uses eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming, biofeedback and a brain-training machine akin to a video game. She emphasizes the power of the mind. “We’re fragile, but able to overcome our past,” Partridge de Garcia says. “There’s always that little light, hope or person in the background letting us know we’re going to be OK.”

She encouraged Oxnard College to expand the program by establishing a Re-Entry Center, where she worked until 2002. Grateful clients have kept in touch. “Each Christmas, I get phone calls from veterans I’ve worked with, thanking me because they can sleep at night,” she says. “Or Re-Entry Program participants who’ve turned their lives around and become lawyers, doctors, social workers.”

As a devoted Trojan with three degrees, she’s also stayed close to her alma mater. She proudly rattles off, “I’m a Helen of Troy, on the board for the Half Century Trojans and 50th Reunion Committee, member of Town & Gown, donor for USC Rossier School of Education, holder of Cardinal & Gold season tickets.” She and her husband, Pedro Garcia EdD ’83, a professor of clinical education at USC Rossier, haven’t missed a home football game since 1977.

Much like the day she carried the Olympic torch, Partridge de Garcia knows firsthand that moving ahead in life often requires support from others. Her Trojan network helps, and so do her guiding words: “Keep your mind on your life’s purpose, be with other people, stay present and in control of what you can learn and build.”

BEKAH WRIGHT

PHOTO CREDIT: COURTESY OF PRISCILLA PARTRIDGE DE GARCIA

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Karen Adelman MFA'12tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.806362014-12-08T18:11:19Z2014-12-08T23:52:59Z Karen Adelman MFA ’12 flew to Colombia to track down bullerengue, a form of music and dance. She returned to Los Angeles and last year presented her installation, La Bulla y Restos, which translates roughly to “the ruckus and remainders.”Timothy O'Neill Knight

The Art of Singing

Armed only with a small canvas backpack, a video camera and an artistic vision honed at USC Roski School of Art and Design, Karen Adelman MFA ’12 flew to Colombia to track down bullerengue.

A form of music and dance based in cumbia, bullerengue is a sort of call and response—a courtship ritual originally generated by the mingling of black slaves with indigenous women in colonial Colombia. Adelman used her $5,000 Neely Macomber Travel Prize—a competitive award for USC Roski students—to experience bullerengue firsthand. She returned to Los Angeles and last year presented her installation, La Bulla y Restos, which translates roughly to “the ruckus and remainders.”

Videos of life on the Colombian coast were projected in endless loops across the USC MFA Gallery walls, illuminating a gigantic sculpture knitted of mohair that hung in the center of the room. As the video’s soundtrack alternated between Spanish conversation and singing, Adelman’s live outbursts of song bounced off the walls, filling the space with the haunting echoes of bullerengue.

Adelman has a talent unusual among visual artists: She is a classically trained opera vocalist. From a young age, the New York native aspired to sing, from belting on a Broadway stage to crooning in jazz-blues clubs. As a child, she also was fascinated by crafts, particularly sewing, embroidery and knitting.

“I end up thinking about those material experiments I was engaging in as a child, working my way through materials to their final form,” Adelman says. “Most objects I make exist in this sculptural place. I also bring my performance work into some kind of integrated reality. I knew my work here would involve music and videos.”

During one of Adelman’s live performances, she paced under a spotlight with a large scroll in hand, synchronizing her vibrant singing with the sounds and voices in the videos. She sang in both English and Spanish, producing the fusion fundamental to bullerengue.

“The entire show is like a song,” Adelman says. “It has aspects that repeat, aspects that don’t. But in the end, there’s this sense of a story being told. And a sensory feeling about what happens.”

A strong advocate of live performance, Adelman has appeared in several other Los Angeles shows following her Macomber exhibition. She says her experimentation with integrating music, spoken word and the visual makes her art impossible to ignore.

“A way of making meaning is to attend to something very carefully,” she says. “One of the reasons I do these performances is that I can activate attention as one of the faculties we have. When there’s signification, there are feelings produced by it.”

LILLIAN INSALATA

PHOTO CREDIT: COURTESY OF KAREN ADELMAN

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Myiesha Taylor MD '00tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.802892014-09-17T20:39:18Z2014-09-17T22:36:55ZAt a young age, Myiesha Taylor MD ’00 knew she wanted to be a doctor. When the ear of her beloved toy rabbit, Bunny, came off, she performed triage and sewed on a new ear made of yarn. She even created a medical record for her patient—one of the many toys in her playroom under her care.Timothy O'Neill Knight

Accute Intervention

At a young age, Myiesha Taylor MD ’00 knew she wanted to be a doctor. When the ear of her beloved toy rabbit, Bunny, came off, she performed triage and sewed on a new ear made of yarn. She even created a medical record for her patient—one of the many toys in her playroom under her care.

It’s like a scene from Disney Junior’s Doc McStuffins, the animated children’s TV series about its title character, a 6-year-old African-American girl. On the show, Doc emulates her physician mom by opening up a clinic in her playhouse where she “fixes” toys.

The similarities are striking, says Taylor, an emergency room physician in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. Taylor’s mom, who was a registered nurse at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, and her grandmother, who was a vocational nurse, nurtured her love for medicine. And like Doc’s stay-at-home dad, Taylor’s husband, William Schlitz, works from home and takes care of their three children (and their three dogs).

“It’s awesome to have your family legitimized through mainstream media. Children see this as normal, having women physicians in society,” Taylor says. To thank Disney for the show, she collected photos from 131 black female doctors on Facebook to create a “We Are Doc McStuffins” collage.

Soon the McStuffins movement took off, motivating Taylor and 11 other African-American female physicians to start the Artemis Medical Society, an organization that offers networking and mentoring opportunities for black female physicians, who represent less than 2 percent of the medical workforce.

Taylor, 40, was born in Inglewood and grew up in Long Beach. She chose emergency medicine after the tragic death of her father, Dwight Taylor, who was killed by gunfire during the 1992 LA riots. He was taken into a hospital without a trauma center, where he died hours later. It set her on her path at age 18.

“I wanted to be the one who steps in at a time of great need and hopefully make a significant difference in that time for as many people as I can,” Taylor says. “My father—had he gotten that, maybe he would have survived.”

She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in chemistry from Xavier University of Louisiana, in New Orleans, and returned home in 1996 to attend the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

“USC felt like a family, a community,” Taylor says. Learning from students of different backgrounds and cultures at USC has helped her be a more culturally competent physician.

These days, being a mom by day and an emergency physician by night keeps her busy. “What’s rewarding is the balance that’s achievable with this profession,” she says. “I get to go home each day and say that I’ve made a difference.”

MARY MODINA

PHOTO CREDIT: AP PHOTO/LM OTERO

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Jeff Gold '79tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.802882014-09-17T20:28:18Z2014-09-17T22:35:39ZA preserver of rock ’n’ roll history, Jeff Gold ’79 is a gift to the vinyl revival. As a kid, he collected records and then resold them—developing a shrewd comprehension of vinyl currency. He even traveled to Europe to find rare albums for his mail-order business, all while he was still a teenager.Timothy O'Neill Knight

A Vinyl Goldmine

A preserver of rock ’n’ roll history, Jeff Gold ’79 is a gift to the vinyl revival.

Gold has been obsessed with music since his childhood in Los Angeles, where he drifted asleep every night listening to Top 40 radio. As a kid, he collected records and then resold them—developing a shrewd comprehension of vinyl currency. He even traveled to Europe to find rare albums for his mail-order business, all while he was still a teenager.

At USC he majored in business (“I realized I didn’t want to be looking for used records at the Salvation Army when I was 40”) and kept growing his enterprise, which was pulling in $40,000 a year by the time he was 25.

His acumen caught the eye of the president of A&M Records, who hired him and eventually named him vice president of marketing and creative services. He worked with artists like Bryan Adams, Janet Jackson and The Police. In 1990 he joined Warner Bros. Records, working with R.E.M., Madonna and Prince, and ultimately was named executive vice president/general manager. Gold earned four Grammy nominations for art direction; he won in 1990. Those were heady days.

“I remember going to show Prince an album cover,” Gold says. “He said, ‘Sit on that couch,’ and did a dress rehearsal of his entire show for me and three other people. I was maybe eight feet away from him.”

In the mid-1990s, the man obsessed with retro discs quickly recognized the power of the online world. He struck a deal with America Online (before the World Wide Web) to establish a presence for Warner Bros. where fans could chat with artists. Warner Bros. became an early online leader among record companies.

Gold also was instrumental in a campaign launched by the voting advocacy group Rock the Vote in the ’90s to pass the “motor voter bill,” which allowed citizens to register to vote at the same time they applied for a driver’s license. Gold proposed printing a “Dear Senator” postcard on the cardboard packaging for CDs that consumers could mail in to support the bill. Artists loved the idea, and hundreds of thousands of postcards were forwarded to Congress.

“A few months later, we found ourselves at the bill- signing ceremony at the White House,” Gold says, “where Bill Clinton name-checked Rock the Vote as a big reason it got passed, and said, ‘I filled out one of those postcards myself.’ It was the most surreal thing imaginable.”

Along the way, he’s curated exhibits, donated memorabilia to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and written the book 101 Essential Rock Records. And he’s returned to his first love—buying and selling rare records and music memorabilia—but has pushed it into the 21st century through his website recordmecca.com. “This was going to be my retirement hobby,” he laughs, “and very quickly it got out of control—in a good way.

“I’m at the point in my life where I only want to do what I want to do. Fortunately, there’s plenty I want to do.”

TIM GREIVING

PHOTO CREDIT: EILON PAZ

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Carly Rogers OTD ’11, MA ‘04tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.799912014-06-20T22:43:11Z2014-06-20T23:02:58ZCarly Rogers OTD ’11, MA ’04 learned early on that water heals. Her mother died when Rogers was only 18, and Rogers, then a Los Angeles County lifeguard, used to cleanse her grief in the Pacific’s salty waves.Timothy O'Neill Knight

Water Works

Carly Rogers OTD ’11, MA ’04 learned early on that water heals. Her mother died when Rogers was only 18, and Rogers, then a Los Angeles County lifeguard, used to cleanse her grief in the Pacific’s salty waves. “I would dive under the water and just lie there,” Rogers says.

One day, she watched a boy with cerebral palsy drop himself from his wheelchair onto the beach to crawl and pull himself toward the water. She had an epiphany: “Oh, my gosh, we need to take these kids surfing!”

Fast-forward a few years to when Rogers was pursuing her master’s degree through the USC Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. She wrote a proposal for an ocean therapy program as a mock class exercise. But when her lifeguard-friend Jimmy Miller died shortly afterward, his brother asked her to implement her dream program through a nonprofit organization set up to honor Miller. Not even a year after Rogers graduated, the Jimmy Miller Memorial Foundation began teaching adapted surfing to children who had suffered abuse. The foundation later extended the program to Marines and war veterans. It now runs about 60 sessions a year in Manhattan Beach, Calif., and farther south at Camp Pendleton.

The feat of standing up on a board and riding a wave empowers people to overcome mental, emotional or physical challenges by boosting their self-esteem, Rogers explains. And for veterans, being part of the surfing community brings back a sense of family, some- thing soldiers often say they miss after leaving the service, she says. The adrenaline rush associated with the sport offers a socially acceptable alternative to risky behavior, too.

Even her first time working with Marines, many of whom had post-traumatic stress disorder, Rogers saw that men who were guarded at the beginning of the session grew relaxed and open later on. “They came out [of the water] smiling and laughing and wanted to talk about it,” she says. “That inspired the rest of my life.”

Ocean therapy grew from a far-fetched idea to a program serving hundreds thanks to a chain of serendipitous events, Rogers says. But it also emerged from what she knows best: the water. Raised on the beach, she’s taught surfing for two decades. She knows that you have to wait for that perfect moment to catch a wave, and then you go for it—in the ocean as in life.

CHRISTINA SCHWEIGHOFER

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John Rockwell ’04 and Kristopher “Kip” Barnes ’05 tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.799902014-06-20T22:26:51Z2014-06-20T22:59:06ZBefore John Rockwell ’04 and Kristofor “Kip” Barnes ’05 made beer together as Los Angeles Ale Works, they made music together in the Trojan Marching Band.Timothy O'Neill Knight

Brewing for Business

Before John Rockwell ’04 and Kristofor “Kip” Barnes ’05 made beer together as Los Angeles Ale Works, they made music together in the Trojan Marching Band.

With a friendship developed on practice fields and over years of bus rides, they stayed close after graduation. As Rockwell got into commercial real estate, Barnes taught English in Japan, where he discovered sake and began a romance with fermented beverages. When Barnes returned to the United States, Rockwell, an avid home brewer, enticed Barnes to give the hobby a try. Soon the duo’s creative drive and ambition led them to develop their own recipes, enter contests and win medals with brews ranging from classic styles to more experimental ideas.

When the real estate market stalled in 2009, the idea of starting a brewery—the pipe dream of about every home brewer who’s boiled wort— began to occupy Rockwell’s thoughts. And Barnes, now practically obsessed with brewing himself, cajoled Rockwell to start the company. They’ve worked together methodically to grow the concept for their brand.

“As a trombone player,” says Barnes, who attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts on a band grant, “you can’t make good music without the other instruments surrounding you.” The pair poured this spirit of collaboration into their beer.

While holding down day jobs — Barnes in post-production information technology and Rockwell as project manager at a consulting firm — the pair collaborated on the business plan and brewed beer at home every chance they got. Nearly every Saturday, Rockwell would arrive at Barnes’ backyard in the early morning hours to refine their recipes and techniques.

Years of research, practice and planning culminated in a successful 2013 Kickstarter campaign to raise the capital to make beer on a commercial scale. Without a brewing facility of their own, Los Angeles Ale Works brews everything from steam beer—a California original—to Bavarian-style roggenbier using rented space and equipment at Ohana Brewing Co.’s facility near downtown Los Angeles. The money raised with Kickstarter bought the equipment needed to co-exist in Ohana’s brewery while the pair pursues a brewery of their own. They brew in small batches, and about three dozen bars in Los Angeles County offer the beers on draft periodically.

Rockwell says USC Marshall School of Business gave him “a solid business foundation” and the tools to become an entrepreneur, but it was the school’s community that he’s found most valuable. “Last year,” he says, “I was able to go back to meet a professor of entrepreneurship during his office hours for fundraising advice.”

Craft beer is growing at a prodigious rate in Los Angeles, but the partners are wary of too much growth too fast. They envision a destination brewery in Los Angeles that captures its neighborhood’s feel. Barnes adds, “We’re very focused on community. [We want] to get big while staying small.”

What does getting big mean to the Los Angeles Ale Works founders? Rockwell explains their simple metric: “When our beer is pouring at Traddies, we’ll know we’ve made it.”

JOHN VERIVE

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Aja Brown ’04, MPL ’05 tag:alumni.usc.edu,2014://101.796352014-04-02T17:09:13Z2014-04-02T18:15:35ZAs a young girl, Aja Brown ’04, MPL ’05 had an unusual interest: real estate and construction. She’d beg her mom to take her to local development projects, and on Sundays she’d analyze the Los Angeles Times classifieds to compare rental units in different areas and cities.Timothy O'Neill Knight

Landslide Winner

As a young girl, Aja Brown ’04, MPL ’05 had an unusual interest: real estate and construction. She’d beg her mom to take her to local development projects, and on Sundays she’d analyze the Los Angeles Times classifieds to compare rental units in different areas and cities.

“I always knew what the median rents were,” she says, sitting tall in her hefty brown- leather office chair. It was the beginning of a passion for community development—one that’s landed her the mayorship of Compton, Calif.

Where others see a financially troubled city beset by gangs and crime, Brown looks at Compton as a “diamond in the rough.” Fueled by studies in policy, planning and development at the USC Price School of Public Policy, Brown envisions Compton as a thriving community with quality housing, a strong educational system and safe streets and neighborhoods.

Brown’s ties with the south Los Angeles County city go back decades to a dark time in her family’s life. In 1973, Brown’s maternal grandmother was raped and murdered in her Compton home. Her mother fled to Altadena, where she raised Aja and her twin brother to stay out of trouble and work hard. Brown remembers her mother telling them even in kindergarten that she couldn’t afford college for both, so they’d have to get good grades to earn scholarships. The plan worked out: Brown attended USC thanks to grants.

In 2009, ignoring the reservations of her concerned mother, Brown and her husband moved from nearby Gardena to Compton. Was she deliberately returning to her roots? “I know it seems like that, but no,” the 31-year-old says. “I just saw so much work that could be done here.”

Brown first volunteered for the city, then she became a city employee and founded a community-development nonprofit. Each approach on its own seemed incomplete, she says, so she ran for mayor in 2013 and won decisively. Though fairly new to Compton, she’d previously held civic posts in other cities, including planning commissioner in Pasadena.

Public safety, economic development and youth development are her priorities. She proposes the school district turn the city’s three high schools into academies focused on science and technology, business and trades, and arts, respectively; she wants to see Saturday and afterschool programs at the new community center.
What comes after Compton? Brown says she focuses on today: being a “great mayor” so she can meet her community’s needs. “Peace comes,” she adds, “when you know that you have done all that you can do, and so, every day, I strive to do my personal best.”

CHRISTINA SCHWEIGHOFER

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Lia Protopapadakis ’01 tag:alumni.usc.edu,2013://101.789272013-12-16T22:56:37Z2013-12-16T23:30:10ZOn any given day, marine scientist Lia Protopapadakis '01 might be calibrating an ultrasound machine to determine the sex of a halibut, diving into a kelp forest to evaluate restoration efforts or lobbying local chefs to put California spiny lobsters on their menus.Timothy O'Neill Knight

Steward of Santa Monica Bay

Lia Protopapadakis ’01 worries about halibut. By 2010, numbers of the popular sport fish had plummeted to about 14 percent what they should be in the Santa Monica Bay. The once plentiful sea-bottom dweller is depleted.

As a marine scientist for The Bay Foundation, Protopapadakis tries to understand why. On any given day, she might be calibrating an ultrasound machine used to determine the sex of halibut or diving into a kelp forest to evaluate the progress of restoration efforts. Or she might be lobbying local chefs to put the California spiny lobster—a sustainable crustacean—on their menus, instead of shipping in its cousin from Maine.

"There aren't too many jobs that let you do all of this," says Protopapadakis, who serves on two state advisory committees, including the California Spiny Lobster Fishery Management Plan.

The Bay Foundation aims to restore and enhance Santa Monica Bay and its watershed. As a staff marine scientist, Protopapadakis must balance research data with the often-conflicting agendas of conservationists, consumers and fishermen.

"I have always been drawn to challenges,"Protopapadakis says. "Fisheries are that wild frontier. Fishermen are just people trying to make a living with their wits and their cunning.

They don't want to be managed. Yet all our uses of the ocean can't coexist peacefully."

She grew up inland in Claremont, Calif., but "my Greek blood drives me to the ocean," Protopapadakis says. She got hooked on marine biology in her introductory biology class at USC. After seeing a slideshow of underwater polar research, she recalls, "I thought, I could get paid to work underwater?

Sign me up!" Her senior year, Protopapadakis enrolled in USC's Catalina Semester. She took a scientific diving course in underwater research methods and completed much of her senior thesis project (on the feeding preferences of Catalina sea urchins) in a wetsuit.

After graduating, Protopapadakis conducted shipboard research for Doug Capone, the Wrigley Professor of Environmental Biology and chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Capone's wife and fellow biologist, Linda Duguay, director of the USC Sea Grant Program, encouraged Protopapadakis to go on to graduate school. Her master's thesis at Duke University focused on bluefin tuna and the challenge of sustainable fisheries management across international boundaries.

With help from Duguay, Protopapadakis landed a highly competitive Knauss Sea Grant Fellowship, which took her to Washington, D.C., in 2007 as an aide to U.S. Rep. Sam Farr of California. She joined the staff of The Bay Foundation the following year.

Protopapadakis has found her niche in the group's geographic reach and focus on science. "We look at the bay as if it starts at the headwaters of the watershed, through the creeks into the ocean," she says."Our work is making a difference."